4. The Moral Ambiguity in The Prequels Makes Them More Interesting
In the original trilogy, there are only two sides: good and evil. Although Han Solo is mostly a neutral character who only looks out for himself, his good side shines through in the end. Everyone else is either good or evil. As it is, no one questions Darth Vader’s evilness, until the very end when he dies.
In the 70’s TV and movies were much less nuanced or complicated when it came to morality. Good was good and evil was evil, and evil had to be eliminated, end of story. Nowadays we have things like Wicked that attempt to understand “evil” people, to see what possible life circumstances led them down a path of ruin and destruction. A lot of times today, we often see “evil” people as mere victims of chance and circumstance. It may have zonked out some people to think of Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader this way. It’s weird to see an iconic villain turn into a frightened child who misses his mommy. But that’s the thing that I think is great about the prequels. They show that even the most despicable people are still human inside.
3. It Introduced Star Wars to a New Generation
For everybody who says that prequels ruined their childhood, I wonder what number of them halted to consider mine and the Millennial era’s adolescence. Phantom Menace turned out when I was 9, the same age as the hero. At the time, Star Wars was getting old and stale. It had achieved “classic science fiction” status, certainly. However, you know what we do with classic films? We ridicule them. We verbally smack them around. We dissect their each and every imperfection with the happy perversion of youngsters pulling the legs off a grasshopper. Nearly every cartoon has spoofed Star Wars, including Hello Kitty. Each effective long-running franchise has changed after some time to stay abreast of evolving times. The prequel Star Wars motion pictures do that effectively. They save the Star Wars franchise out of tired-out-area and let the considerable stories and huge characters of the series enrapture new, more youthful audience.
